About Rural Geometry

Maybe I’m lazy but I just can’t make myself interested in technique or details, nor do I want to know everything about anything. Alan Watts’ The Eternal Present pretty much sums up my philosophy on photography. Some would argue that every shot doesn’t count, that missing a shot isn’t the end of the world, that not stopping because you are late is the way to go.

Perhaps I’m sort of bending the eternal present, but for me, it translates to NOW, Carpe Diem ad infinitum. If I don’t stop, don’t have my camera, am too lazy to get out of the car, that opportunity is gone forever. I do believe that serendipity is the source of some of my very best work, the Big Magic that Elizabeth Gilbert describes to perfection.

Sometimes I think about creation, imagining that divine entity/energy/presence throwing out all kinds of elements, energies, qualities, taking all of them in her/his/their big hands, tossing them up in the air, taking in a huge breath of spirit, blowing it out, and saying, “now, surprise me.” I see this principle evident everywhere all over my work.

When I hold my camera, maybe I’m also saying to it or to the world at large, “now surprise me.” However, I suspect that nature, material reality, the realm of Maya is saying, “Watch this Torri!!!”

I know this: I am the hand that holds the camera, I am the eye that directs the viewfinder. Sometimes it feels as if the images are coming in through my eyes, crisscrossing, or inverting, or whatever crazy dance the optic nerves etc. are doing. The camera is focusing me - saying, “now look at that, hey you, don’t miss this.” And then later, the images magically reappear on my computer and bounce right back onto that screen at the back of my eyeballs. And then I send them out to the larger world of you. Its a giant circle.

And I also know that my work is to record, save, preserve what is most elusive, most transcendent, most compelling. Photography is the memory bank of history.